“Vampire, Abbi.”
“I know.”
“Did you see him?”
“No. I was looking for luck.” She paused. “It isn’t easy to scry when something is stuck in concrete.”
“Scry?”
“I canseethings. You know I can. I just have to see them at the right, um...angle? Light? And the Blarney Stone is luck. That’s a kind of magic. I wanted to see. See if we end up okay.”
She leaned into me a little, then must have remembered my injury and quickly pulled away. “Do you think we are?” she asked. “Okay?”
There was a vampire in the town. The woman behind us had some kind of magic up her sleeve and wouldn’t leave us alone.
Lula was talking to a hunter who wanted us dead, and two gods—well, a god and a demon, which made it worse, really—had decided they wanted a slice of our current shit pie.
Abbi knew all that. That wasn’t what she wanted from me. I knew what she needed. I needed it too.
“Yes,” I said. “We are going to end up okay. I promise.”
She was quiet for the next block or so. I glanced over my shoulder again.
Franny leaned back giving the roof of the hardware store a good once over.
“I think I want to see the ocean again,” Abbi said. “It’s been a long time.”
“We can do that.”
“Ordinary is by the ocean,” she said. “Crow lives there.”
“Why do you call him Crow?”
“He’s only Raven when he’s being a god. When he’s being a friend, he’s funny and smart and just Crow.”
“Have you been friends for a long time?”
She smiled. “Yes. He’s fun to watch. Did you know he tried to steal a Valkyrie feather once? That didn’t work. At all. He almost got killed. But it was funny.”
“Do you trust him?” I asked. “If we find the book and take it to Ordinary, do you think it will be safe?”
She hummed. “Ordinary is different. I see some of it. Some of it isn’t for me to see, and that’s okay.” She brightened. “If we go there, Icouldsee all of it. Maybe even the magic library!”
We were almost at the motel, the heat simmering up off of the concrete turned my stomach and made my head ache.
“Ordinary is good, though,” Abbi said, and it sounded like she was convincing herself along with me. “It’s a safe place for all kinds of people. Even people like me.”
“Like you?”
“Rabbit in the moon down from the sky. I could…play there. Me and Hado would be safe there.”
“Even with all those gods on vacation?”
She nodded. “Sometimes they’re better that way.”
“Like Crow?” I asked.
“Like Crow.”
